Monday, April 14, 2008

New Chair in Australian Literature at UWA

I should think the former Prime Minister will be spitting chips that the new government is smoothly taking the credit for the new Chair in Australian Literature, rumours of which began blowing in the wind in the second half of last year after a campaign waged mainly in The Australian about the perceived decline in Australian studies, particularly Australian literature, in universities. If I have understood the sequence of events correctly, this all started with John Howard's nationalist agenda and now the Rudd/Gillard team has scooped it up and run with it. Neat.

Much talk about the 'death of Australian literature' was generated and much was made, during this campaign, of the fact that with the retirement of Professor Peter Pierce from his chair at James Cook University, Australia was left with 'only one' dedicated Chair of Australian Literature, as though there had once been many such Chairs but the numbers had been steadily dropping off for years, as with an endangered species. Those in the field, however, knew that until the original appointment of Professor Pierce, there had only ever been one to begin with: the Chair of Australian Literature at the University of Sydney, formerly held by Professors Leonie Kramer, GA Wilkes and the redoubtable Elizabeth Webby, and currently by Robert Dixon.

In fact, Australian Literature is a relatively new discipline, established in universities only tentatively in the late 1960s, by the stalwart likes of Vincent Buckley and Chris Wallace-Crabbe at the University of Melbourne and Brian Elliott at the University of Adelaide, after years of sneering resistance by the exiled English or Australian Anglophile academics who dominated Australian university English departments at the time, clutching their well-thumbed copies of Leavis and Lawrence. ("Aw-stralian Littah-rachoor? That's an oxymoron, haw haw.") The Association for the Study of Australian Literature -- still going strong, I'm glad to say -- wasn't even founded until 1978; before that there hadn't really been enough people teaching it to justify the establishment of a professional body.

Australian universities were invited to compete for the establishment of this new Chair and a number of proposals were submitted, but the University of Western Australia was the unanimous choice.

11 comments:

Same story in New Zealand, of course. Even the kiwis who made it into literary academia in the 70s mostly did their PhDs overseas, and tended to specialise in Victorian or Medieval or 20th century (usually before 1950). Albert Wendt, a Samoan, was appointed first Prof of NZ Lit in 1988, in Auckland, and as far as I know that is still the only Chair in NZ Lit.

Great to see you back on this blog, Cat. I belong to a book club set up by Mark Rubbo of Readings (Melbourne's great 'independently owned' book chain), and we read only Australian fiction and non-fiction. I gather he's long been a champion of Australian fiction. It's great. We recently did Landscape of Desire by Kevin Rabalais (about Burke and Wills) and next up is The Spare Room. I hope you have something to say about The Spare Room at some stage. Don't the press love Helen Garner? For a couple of weeks there, she was on everything I picked up. And as the head of our book club said, it's great to see a 65 year old who has enough guts and integrity to present herself as a 65 year old.

Sigmund, I do indeed have much to say about The Spare Room and the many issues it raises, and indeed have revived this blog largely for that purpose. As soon as I finish the heavy run of work on at the moment, I shall address myself to the task.

Re Vincent O'S - he hasn't taught at Auckland, according to his biography. Oddly, I've searched the web and the Auckland Uni site and can't find who is presently sitting in that particular Chair. Maybe it's been abolished... :)

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This photo was taken looking south from a crossroads in the middle of Yorke Peninsula, South Australia, which is the bit that looks like a boot: not the elegant heeled boot of Italy, but a humble foursquare working boot. About 300 metres down the road on the left is the gate to the home paddock of the house I grew up in, and another 5 km or so after that, my home town of Curramulka. This is the landscape I was talking about in my story 'Limestone', in North of the Moonlight Sonata.

The country spread away around them to the horizon in curved layers of pastel colours that were too quiet and weird to have names, gently arched, bands of colour ... This country made you work for the bread of beauty. You had to look and strain and think and stretch your mind to the horizon.

About Me

Read, Think, Write is dedicated to all things books and writing. It incorporates two previous blogs, Australian Literature Diary (2005-2010) and Ask the Brontë Sisters (May-July 2007).
Still Life With Cat is an all-purpose blog containing reflections on whatever is going on in the realms of literature, politics, media, music, dinner, gardening etc.
Blogs by Kerryn Goldsworthy, a writer, critic and editor who lives and works in Adelaide, South Australia.